I grew up in MO and back in the early 60's. One of our school bus drivers was a quail hunting fanatic. During quail season he always had his shotgun in the bus. If a covey of quail ran across the road or was spotted off the road. He would jump out of the bus and shoot some birds! All the boys would jump out of the bus and go retrieve the birds!

When I turned 16 (mid 60's) I got a job with the local concrete company putting in a sewer line the some new logon's the town was putting in. We were always running into rock that had to be blasted. I got to do it all.........drilling, loading the holes and setting it off. What could be more fun than a 16 year old working with dynamite!

That same year I went into the local Western Auto and bought myself a new Remington 1100 (20 ga) with my summer earnings. No paper work at all. The salesman just ask if it was OK with my parents that I was buying a gun. I said "yep" and he said "here you go"

I really don't know if I would want to be a kid growing up in todays world?? Like everyone said "The old days", society was a lot different for us.We were gone sun-up to sundown (sometimes later). Rode the wheels off bicycles or wore out tennis shoes walking!

took my 5 yr old back the lane where my great aunt and uncle use to live yesterday. We walked it about quarter mile each way and i thought he was gonna die......are we almost there dad ? are we? He soon got over it.

I'm a youngster compared to yall. Grew up in late 70's and 80's(parachute pants, big hair do's, blah blah). My Dad wasnt much on fishing, hunting, he never owned but a bb gun. So our fun was bike riding, shooting model rockets, sports, climbing trees and reading about all the real stuff we wanted to do like hunting, trapping, fishing and shooting guns(when i was 11 i worked 7 hours for a win mod 67a 22 rifle[i still have it], but never had much chance to shoot it). I wasnt able to start trapping till i was 23, but i already had the traps bought when i was 18.

the just shall live by faith

member FTA, NRA, SWARFTA, EAFT1776 - the year we told a tyrant we weren't to be under a dictatorCaveat ater macula

I can relate to about everything mentioned, one thing I have noticed and kinda bugs me is why we need so much stuff now. I remember people in 50's and 60's only had the bare bone essentials, now you can't function in todays world without a boxcar load of STUFF.

All us kids in our little school district never really had a bully.One of our farm girls would pound knots on his head if he got out of line.It was fun when it snowed and drifted hard so us older boys could help the bus driver put on tire chains.It was not uncommon for a couple guys to have a fire arm on the bus and nobody ever asked why.The bus driver would let one of the aforementioned kids out in the middle of "a couple miles from home"so the kid could hike over some ground and shoot a rabbit and or a squirrel or two on the rest of the afternoon.I was one of the kids and my Uncle was the bus driver.His daughter, my cousin Cathy was a year older than me and the toughest woman I have ever known. I lived with those folks for quite a few years and remember when they were getting plumbing in the house sometime in the 60'sWe had quite some times back then, I was an accomplished truck and tractor driver by the time I was 12.Kind of would like to drift back there again.

LOL Zim

I find your total disregard for anyone that sat quietly cowering due to the aggressively offensive behavior quite disturbing. A major failure on the school districts part for exposing children to such an overdose of masculinity.

Oh yeah, and another thing. The adults should be held accountable for allowing such shenanigans when the planet is approaching temperatures of uninhabitability.

In high school (66 to 70) I would have my 243 in my car, the gym teacher/baseball coach would come get me out of class if he saw a woodchuck on the football or baseball fields. I would carry the rifle thru school, out the back door by the shops and shoot off he top of a car. For each chuck Coach bought me a lunch! Those that see me can vouch I did not miss many lunches. Last year in school I had a 1970 GTO with pails in the trunk. Bought chucks other kids had shot on the way to school for a quarter and we fed them to the zoo animals. In Jersey you could get a farmers driving license at age 16, but all of us drove way before that. I drove a 10 ton straight job 40 miles each way 4 times a week to get cow udders, lungs, tripe and livers for mink feed. All this fresh product was in metal 55 gallon drums,open tops, no hand trucks, you rolled them on bottom edge by hand, took some practice to do. Was indeed a different world back then.

Can relate to all the stories. We would bring our guns to school and keep them in the boiler room where the janitor stayed. After school we would change into our play clothes and hunt our way home. We also helped put chains on the bus and during deer season our bus driver had his 30-06 on the bus and we had the windows down looking for deer. 95% of our roads were dirt roads with houses far and few between.

During the early 70s I liked to hunt and trap a lot more than I liked going to school. So that is what I would do. One morning, as I was walking down a dirt road towards the farm to hunt squirrels, the truant officer pulled up beside me. He hauled me and my rifle to school for a day of in-school suspension. Me and the rifle were released to the custody of my mom after school was out.

I refinished my dadís old Ithaca model 37 as one of my woodshop projects.

Me and a bunch of my high school buddies would always have small game gear and guns in our trucks or trunks of our cars and would go hunting almost every night after school in the fall. Guns and knives in our vehicles and nobody ever got threatened, shot, killed or arrested. Times sure have changed.

I remember those crimped tubes as well as the ones pictured. In my area there were two sizes...."Quarter Pack", or "Dime Pack". I spit a bushel basket full down the loading spout of that Daisy 94 So much of what's written was a part of my upbringing. My folks were Old-school honest, and they instilled in me a strong disdain for liars and thieves. Nearly all the adults in my family were hard drinking, and I saw a lot of stuff I shouldn't have, yet these same people never missed a days work from being hung-over. You went to work, that was the deal, and they held up their end of the bargain. I did the same, minus the booze. Both my kids got the work ethic gene too, thank God.